In Sheep's Clothing
by Hazgarn
Summary: Nathan Petrelli: Son, brother, father, Senator… Impostor. The lies that bind him to a broken life may not survive his attempts to repair it. What will survive when illusions shatter? Follows volume four's "An Invisible Thread". Canon pairings, Heidi/Sylar
1. Make the Man

**In Sheep's Clothing**

**Rating:** T (PG-13) for violence, non-graphic sexual situations and profanity.  
**Characters:** Sylar!Nathan, Peter, Angela, Noah, Danko, Claire, Heidi, Simon, Monty, Matt, Janice.  
**Pairings:** Sylar/Heidi, Matt/Janice  
**Summary:** Nathan Petrelli: Son, brother, father, Senator… Impostor. The lies that bind him to a broken life may not survive his attempts to repair it. What will remain when illusions shatter? Follows volume four's "An Invisible Thread".

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**Chapter One: Make the Man**

In the bedroom of his apartment in Washington DC, Senator Nathan Petrelli sat silently, half dressed on the bench at the foot of his bed. It was early in the morning still, the sun not yet risen over the horizon and it wouldn't be for another two hours. He could feel the chill of predawn through the thin fabric of his shirt. It had to be the cool air that explained the prickle, the raise of flesh as the hair along his arms stood on end. An uncomfortable sensation that nonetheless did nothing to divert his attention from the object that had so captivated his interest.

He was staring at a watch.

Heidi had given him the watch for his birthday. He'd stopped wearing it after they separated, after the confusion and Peter's apparent death, but he'd left his other behind in Mexico, giving it up to return Claire her necklace. Now, he found himself thinking about his wife—his ex-wife, he reminded himself—for the first time in months.

Playing his fingers over the cold silver just then, he could see it with a strange sort of clarity… As though at a remove he was watching them, the two of them, sitting on the couch in the den. Her, swollen pregnant, curled up awkwardly with her head in his lap. Him, with his hand on her shoulder as they watched the news that evening. His tie loose, his sleeves rolled up. Her shoes are off, her dark blue coat draped over her legs like a blanket. Her hand moving slowly, slyly to draw the small box from her coat pocket. His soft kiss against her hair as he murmurs his thanks. But for all its vividness and complexity of detail, the memory was strangely…flat. Incomplete. He felt he should remember the warm weight of her against his leg. He should remember the scent of her hair. He should be able to remember which of his sons she had been carrying at the time.

A distracted frown worked its way across his features as he broke himself free of the reminiscence, tugging the watch onto his wrist with a slowness that was almost hesitant. The metal bit slightly, cold against his skin. He'd been having several of these lapses, lately. When he'd first noticed them, those first weeks after the business with Sylar, they'd been far more common, and most distressing. His mother had said that he'd more than likely hit his head in the fight. A minor concussion that left him rattled, a little…disjointed. But the effects would wear off with time. She'd been quite confident about that.

She had seemed to be right. Over the next few days he'd spent time with all the familiar strangers around him, and slowly things started to fill in around the edges. As time went by, in his daily routine he encountered fewer of those alien things or people that were supposed to be a part of his life. He'd thought—he'd _hoped_ it had been the end to it. Only now, thinking of Heidi had brought it back. That faint sense of apprehension that something wasn't right, which grew into true concern. And now fear.

Reaching back into his memory for the years they spent together, he came back with a handful of dull fragments. He found himself missing them, suddenly and sharply, these shadows that used to be a wife and sons. There was a _possessiveness_ to the feeling of which he found himself briefly shocked and unable to fathom. It wasn't like him, he could barely recognize himself in it. The abyss of early morning darkness shown through the windows, yawning black and vacant like an open maw. The feeling of emptiness seemed to echo what he was feeling inside.

In the oppressive silence of the room in which he sat, the faint ticking of the watch on his wrist expanded to fill all available space. It was almost painfully that he tore himself free of the mood that had threatened to consume him. Blandly, he scolded himself.

_Keep up with this nonsense, and you'll be late._

Running a tired hand over his face, Nathan stood slowly, walking to the closet. He tried to put the troubled thoughts behind him, but the brush of skin against fabric constantly called his attention to articles attached to half-formed wisps of memory: rows of shirts recalling successes and losses, ties recalling dinners and anniversaries, candles, and red wine. For all the details sharply pressed into his memory, the sensations, emotions, associations that should go with them were dingy, and ragged at the edges.

His eyes squeezed shut as he pulled out a jacket, one that seemed to resonate with the memory of her smile, images of hugging his boys close. His fingers clenched, cloth balled in his fists as anger began to well up in him. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough of _them_. He didn't feel like he really remembered them..._knew_ them. He wanted them where he could see them, touch them, have them in front of him, and maybe he could hold on to them tightly enough that they couldn't be taken away.

He had to be with them.

He tried to reason with himself, that he had a busy day ahead of him, a full day, one that didn't have room for this sort of sentimental indulgence. The sort of irresponsibility for which he used to mock Peter mercilessly. On the coattails of the thought, his mouth pulled into a smirk.

_Peter_…

And Nathan's argument with himself was decided solidly. He slid into the jacket, taking a moment to smooth out the wrinkles he'd caused with his earlier abuse before he reached for his phone.

"Shannon? Yes, I need you to clear out the day for me. I know. It's a family emergency. I'm heading back to New York for a couple of days. " Stepping into the closet, he ran an indecisive eye along the ties on the rack. His mouth turned down in a pensive frown as he considered his choices. "Whatever you can do. No, that won't be necessary. I've already arranged an early flight."

He snapped the phone shut, the sharp click ringing out loudly in the stillness. Already the looming unease that had been overhanging his morning had begun to wane. He credited it the new sense of purpose he felt. The sound of ticking receded from his awareness as he finished the task of preparing for his day. It was already a very different day than he had anticipated on waking up, one he hoped would mean opportunities to make up for the mistakes he had made, to repair some of those things he had broken.

In the mirror, he straightened his tie. He searched his reflection closely. He wasn't sure what flaw he expected to find, but it was a while before he was satisfied, content that the man in the mirror was who Heidi needed to see: a man aware of his sins, and willing to try and atone for them. It was an image he held hope he could match with his actions. Shrugging into a heavy coat, he gave himself a final glance as he headed toward the window.

_Well,_ he thought with a faint, strange smile, _they say clothes make the man, after all._


	2. Til Death Do Us Part

**Chapter Two: 'Til Death Do Us Part**

There was a cool breeze blowing, biting lightly at the cheeks and noses of those braving the air of early autumn, but the sky was clear and overall the morning not unpleasant. At that moment the sun was still low and twilight reigned between the buildings. Later, after the sun had its chance to banish the last trace of the night's chill from the darker corners of the city, the day ahead promised to be beautiful. There had been rain over Philadelphia. His attempts to stay above the weather had ended up in vain as he'd come out of the clouds, his hair and coat soaked when he arrived on her doorstep. To his great relief, she had not seemed to notice.

His coat was still damp. Its cold, heavy presence at his back where he'd draped it over the back of his chair was only moderately distracting, but he had let it pull his mind away from his thoughts. It felt as though a part of the storm-bruised sky he'd passed through to get here had followed him. Or a piece of the consuming darkness he'd awoken to that morning. Nathan could find no comfort in clear skies or warm sun promised as that same emptiness began to creep back into his world.

At an outdoor table in a sidewalk café in Manhattan, his ex-wife, Heidi, sat just across from him at the same table. Their eyes were locked together as they each wrestled the silence that had fallen between them after a miscarried greeting. Yet that contact seemed tenuous, strained against the palpable sense of distance which loomed between them. He was certain that she felt it, too. Some small part of it. What he doubted was that her understanding of their alienation extended to its true cause, the cause which was killing the hope that had been born in him earlier that morning even as she watched.

Despite his memories of time together as man and wife, the woman that sat before him was a stranger.

He could not remember how he once felt about this woman. He felt nothing now. Against what he believed he _should_ feel what it really felt like was a betrayal. The uncertainty lay in which of them had betrayed the other. The disappointment bourn by this defeat was crushing, and in contrast to the intensity of emotion that had driven him here, his sense of purpose, his _need_ to be with her, he had returned to feeling…empty. Almost dead inside.

And yet oddly, perhaps perversely, as he looked across the space between them at this familiar, unfamiliar woman, his hands almost burned to touch her. His eyes were drawn down where they rested on the table before him. Their stillness belied the turbulence of his thoughts. He drew them back slightly, fingers curling away into the palms. Right now they were snakes, and he didn't trust them.

Perhaps it was only because he'd turned his eyes away that he finally managed to find his voice.

"You have no idea what it means to me that you said yes."

There was no lie in those words, at least. It would be impossible for her to guess the amount of importance this meeting held for him. To her it was just a morning coffee before she heads to work. Just to talk, just to see her, just because he was in town… Just…

"You kind of caught me by surprise when you showed up. I thought you were still in DC." In her voice was a note of amusement beneath her irritation, her surprise that he'd shown up as suddenly and unexpectedly as he had, the annoyance at the interruption it posed to the life she had put together without him.

Pulling himself away slowly from his own troubled inner life, he allowed himself to take her in fully once more. Perhaps, he hoped, there was some crucial thing he had missed that would lead him to find what it was he was lacking. Her own hands were clasped loosely together on the table in front of her, just inches away. They filled the empty space between them, like a barrier. Dressed for the workday, small line creasing the skin between her eyes, the squared posture of her shoulders as she sat in the seat across from him… The details fell together in a way that struck him quite suddenly. It was so…defensive. She was prepared with every line of her body not to listen to what he had to say.

"I took a flight out this morning," he said, leaning back slightly, hoping that between his words and his posture some distance would put her at ease, "to visit my brother."

"That's…sweet." She frowned slightly, the furrow between her eyes deepening. Her hands shifted slightly, parting from their grasp on one another. She was a smart woman, he knew that much. He felt she knew what he was really here for. She would also recognize how rare it was for him to drop everything for family.

_I wonder_, he speculated as the uncertainty bloomed in her eyes, _if right now I feel like a stranger to _her.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Nathan, I—" Her words held a hint of desperation, her shoulders dropping almost imperceptibly. They had almost another hour before this had to come to a close, but she couldn't want to spend that time trapped in this awkward emotional dance any more than he did. She wanted him to get to the point. He decided to oblige her before she was forced to push him. Before it pushed her away.

"You don't have to say anything, Heidi. I just… I'd like you to listen." His hands perched on the edge of the table, the heels of his palms braced against the rim. He took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind. He'd spent the entirety of the trip that morning deciding what he was going to say to her, but now that she was in front of him his confusion had stolen the words from his mouth. He spent a moment trying to bring it all back together.

"I… I got caught up in a lot of things. First, when Pete was missing… I handled it so badly…I don't have to tell you that." He saw her head dip slightly, no doubt remembering. The depression and drinking, living like a bum, unable to visit his children. That much, at least, had already been mended. They had Peter back, and he'd put his life back together. He'd been allowed the right to visit them once more. Like so much else, his recollection of his depression, of the pain at losing his sons was blunted beyond holding any sting. "After we found him, I wanted to try and _fix_ things between us. But things just started happening so fast after that. The assassination attempt, things related to my father's death, the assignment from the President… I just…"

He trailed off as he remembered all the betrayals. Forced to confront his actions in his attempts to make amends with Peter, his grasp of everything that he had done was still a little shaky, but he'd been able to recall most of the things that had driven them apart in the past months. As he thought of his father, he held on briefly to the anger the memory brought. Perhaps no good could come from hating the dead, but it was so rare in the past weeks for him to stumble upon some remembered sense or emotion that felt genuinely like his own. He let the feeling go with a touch of regret.

_If that's the best legacy Arthur Petrelli could leave, perhaps I'm better off._

He realized something, then. His brother and mother, Claire, the others…they weren't the only ones he'd betrayed during those months. He should have had time for his sons. He should have _made_ time for them, and damn anything else. His shame at that failure kindled a fierce, bitter anger. It seethed. His excuses were pathetic. _Insignificant_. It didn't matter what he had been doing, or what he'd done. Fathers should never _abandon_ their children.

"I lost sight of what was important." He said, finally. He had to close his eyes to speak, to avoid her seeing the heat of anger that was burning itself inside him. "I'm finally seeing that now. I still have a lot of things I have to work out with my mother and brother, but the one thing I know…" It _was_ the one thing he knew at this moment. The one thing he was _sure_ of. She frowned, and he could tell she saw it coming. As it stood now, though, he couldn't bring himself to care. It had to be said.

"I want my family back, Heidi. And if it's at all possible for that to include you and the boys, I'd be willing to do anything… I'll make any sacrifice to have that happen. Please. Just give me another chance." He finally allowed himself to put his hand out next to hers on the table. It was such a gentle touch, deceptively casual when there was that _insistence_ inside him, he let the tips of his fingers find contact with her skin. "I know it sounds a cliché, but I want you to see that I've…changed."

She still wore her wedding ring. It was a piece of the puzzle of her, one that he'd noted and stuffed away for keeping before he'd even had a chance to sit down. He brushed the pad of his thumb lightly against the finger that wore it. The sensation of his finger against the gold brought back the image of the day he put it there. Their vows. Their family looking on. The way she looked in that dress. It astounded him that he could have ever forgotten something so beautiful.

But there was still that…distance. An absence in himself.

"I love you." He tried to make _himself_ believe it. Tried to make himself feel it. Tried to make himself _remember_ feeling it. His voice was thick with emotion, but it wasn't love. He shoved hard on the frustration and anger he felt at this…_lack_…as deep down inside him as he could. Still, he felt a faint tinge of brutal satisfaction at acquiring the memory, like he'd scratched an itch that had been bothering him for a long time. Though, still, the need he'd been feeling hadn't receded.

If anything, it was stronger now than ever.

"I don't know, Nathan…" He looked into her eyes, fearful that she'd picked up on something wrong. From the way his skin was tingling where they'd touched, he was surprised he hadn't burned her. But she hadn't taken her hand away from his. He saw that her eyes had begun to tear, redden. It made their blue so vivid. He found himself speculating that was probably quite lovely when she cried. Her lips press slightly, forming a thin line as that crease on her forehead squirmed indecisively between her eyebrows. He realized she was trying to convince herself that this wasn't what she wanted. That whatever the life was she had without him was enough. If the empty space he had left in her life was even a shadow of how he felt, he knew it couldn't be at all easy to do.

"You don't have to make up your mind now. Just… Give it some consideration."

The words were so impersonal he could have been selling watches. Inside, he was wrestling with the thought of what he would do if she just said no. He didn't know what he _wouldn't_ do to have them. The intensity and possessiveness of what he was feeling was almost frightening. He decided he had to distract himself from them. He tried to latch onto the first safe thought that crossed his mind. The words he found coming out of his mouth surprised him.

"Also… I want you to meet her."

"'Her'?" The dangerous tone supplied him with Heidi's own surprise, on its heels followed by suspicion and anger. Her features twisted, eyes growing hard as her eyebrows drew downward. However she looked when she cried, she was downright stunning when she was pissed. Then something seemed to cross her mind, and her features softened dramatically. "Your daughter?"

"Claire..." He trailed off, deeply regretting the change in topic. As with Arthur, the emotions he felt for Claire sometimes felt very real. They were possibly some of the strongest ones he truly possessed. They were also among the most _confusing_. While he considered his words, he found her staring at him. Between the silence and her searching gaze, he suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. Like he'd exposed a raw wound. "I know it's… Damn, it's awkward, but I would. She's…"

He gave a weak smile, eyes lowered to the table where their hands still touched. He let his fingers fall back from that contact slowly, angry at himself for dragging that confusion into the conversation and feeling very foolish. "You know, never mind. It was a stupid idea. I—"

"No." Heidi gave a small smile. Not an enthusiastic one, but it felt genuine. He wondered if, without fully understanding it, she had detected something of the weakness he had exposed. On the table, her hand returned to his, their fingers twining together loosely. "I'd love to meet her. She sounds important to you."

"She's…" Important was a rather neutral word. Nathan found the strength for another anemic smile, but it broadened and gained life as he thought of her. Claire was back in Washington. She had been working closely with her _other_ father, trying to help with what they were doing—trying to be a hero—but had still taken the time to visit him several times over the past few weeks. He still couldn't fathom how in so short a time she'd become such a significant part of his life. It was difficult to sort his feelings for her. Mixed with the pride of a father was something else, something he found difficult to name. The closest he had come to defining it was a sort of admiration. The admiration of a craftsman for something…flawless.

"She's very special."

In the remaining minutes, their conversation turned toward less charged topics. About her work, about his, and how his sons were doing. Though the desire to see them was still a painful force, he was beginning to doubt that the reunion would bring any more sense of reality to things than had that with their mother. He found himself thinking back upon the vows whose memory he had recovered. "'Til death do us part" seemed to hold a strange note in his mind, for some reason. Perhaps he simply survived his life, anymore, instead of living it. This couldn't be all there was. There had to be more to this. To them. To her. There had to be something he was missing, some _piece_ of her that couldn't be seen that would make him love her like he was supposed to. Make him remember why he ever had in the first place.

He made a new vow—to himself and the strange _need_ he felt to claim her. He would love her. He would remember _how_ to love her. He would find that secret. No matter how deeply into her he had to dig.


	3. Hello New York

**Chapter Three: Hello New York**

He brought out his cell, dialing Peter's number. A sense of stabbing irritation filled him as his brother's voice filled his ear, informing him to leave a message.

"Hey, Pete." He fought down the feeling, managing smoothly to keep it out of his voice. "I'm in town, and I thought it might be good to talk to you. Maybe grab lunch. Call me back."

The disappointment of that first meeting had left the growling void inside of him unfulfilled. A painful conviction tightened in his heart that the future could hold nothing but more of the same. The result was a bleak, desolate mood that cut at his every thought like a bitter wind. Nevertheless, Nathan was beginning to detect an unexpected sliver of tranquility creeping into him, interrupting his troubled thoughts. It was a vague, ambient sense of almost-belonging, so removed from the disorienting detachment that clung to everything else in his life that he felt his eyes sting with the beginnings of tears. Not content to simply let the emotion rule him, he made an attempt to still his mind, trying to trace a cause to the feeling.

He froze in his tracks on the congested sidewalk, eyes sliding shut, and let the crowd soup anonymously past him. Amid their jostling, it was difficult to maintain a motionless center. He was pulled from his inner search, focus drawn from his own thoughts outward to his surroundings. Eventually he just stood and listened. There was a stamping, almost steady rhythm, the cars a hum, the people all winding around each other like the workings of a living machine. His eyes fluttered briefly under his closed lids as it passed through him, like a lulling vibration. For a moment he felt like he could feel every part of New York, attached to the whole through the other pieces moving around him.

The source of that familiar sense within him, he finally decided, was the city itself.

As he considered that thought, it only made sense. In some indefinable way, D.C. had fit him like a handed down shirt. Too big and shaped to someone else's desires. Though the same could be said of everything in his current life, the feeling had been more pronounced while he was there. Washington may have been the goal of all his consuming ambition, but he felt with a conviction that couldn't be denied that _this_ was home. The sentiment was pure, genuine, and for once undivided within his being. It was such a truly rare thing as to be instantly treasured.

It wasn't a conscious decision on his part, surrendering to the desire to indulge this thing he had discovered. He simply let himself be taken back into the chaotic, harmonious current. He walked with no particular destination in mind, lead by…whatever it was. The crowd, the city, his subconscious, he wasn't sure, but he allowed himself to be directed by it. Not for the first time that morning, the thought flitted weakly through is mind of how unlike him it was to allow himself to be piloted by his impulses. The notion held even less color than it had in those early hours, left pale and indistinct beside the solid reality of this throbbing attachment to the city's pulse. He consoled that dim voice of practical outrage in the back of his mind that he had time enough to spare.

_Plenty of time_…

As he wandered, his thoughts for the most part fell into the background, somewhere behind the murmuring swarm, beneath the traffic. He absorbed the scenery around him, gratified by the occasional juxtaposition of memory and emotion. Never perfect. When the associations were there—ghosts of a sense, a sentiment—all too often the recollections that should be attached to them were conspicuously absent. And still there were the traitor memories from before, dilute and empty. Even where the two met, there seemed to be a peculiar dissonance.

Such was the case with Kirby Plaza.

He hadn't noticed entering Midtown, utterly submerged by the momentum that carried him. If he had realized, he might have turned his feet somewhere else. As he looked at the helical statue, he felt a sharp twinge in his chest. The first round of strange events had been punctuated here. Violently. He had almost died here. Perhaps _should_ have died here. The phantom pain stirred something, an animal voice within whispering fear that almost succeeded in turning him away. He fought against the dread knifing coldly his chest. It was irrational. The past couldn't hurt him. Trapped beyond the strange disconnect he'd been feeling, as that hurt dulled and died, he half felt nothing could.

With a hard, cold will, he struggled to bring memory and mood together into something comprehensible. This was where his personal life and political career had taken a sudden, near-fatal swerve. Did that explain the anger? Did it explain the sense of defeat? A part of him was still unsatisfied with the outcome of that night, he realized. He knew it was evil, but that part acknowledged that if events had turned out differently it would have placed true power in his hands. He could have been President. He drew back from the thought, a half-dead echo of revulsion rattling through him like a cast stone clattering in the darkness. At the waste it would have meant, the irreparable damage to the timeless clock whose harmony had carried him earlier.

He attempted to pull his thoughts from their apocalyptically dismal track, but found himself dwelling instead on the ultimate cause of that once-prophesied destruction.

Peter.

_I almost lost my brother here_.

The notion entered his mind greeted only by an indifference that he examined and categorized as nearly inhuman. The blandness frustrated him. He thought back over the events that had drawn them all—strangers, family, enemies—to this place. Was that what had begun to separate him from his brother?

Sifting through his fractured collection of incomplete memories, he was forced to admit it had begun a long time before. First it was just life. He and Peter were simply very different people. Then he had chosen to sacrifice his relationship with his brother on the altar of his political career. Right now, he found himself unable to summon any real regret for his actions. His motivations for doing so were just as remote to him as everything else. It didn't seem so long ago that he'd invested every scrap of energy into his maneuverings, his plans. Right now they struck him as being so very pointless, petty. Small.

Perhaps he should have been more at home with the feeling of having to clean up someone else's mess. He'd had enough of them in the past—his father's, his mother's, Peter's—his broken recollections confirmed that much. The difference now, he was being cast as the janitor of his own life's garbage. It was aggravating. The chasm that had been stricken between he and his brother would take effort to bridge, and the divide within his own self would only make that task more difficult. In spite of that substantial wall situated between him and his goals, he refused to allow the thought that the situation was beyond him to repair. It only hardened his resolve to break free.

Failure was unacceptable.

He pulled himself away, too-deliberate strides carrying him on as he put that unwanted parcel of his past behind him.

As his travels wound further, without conscious aim, Nathan began to suspect that perhaps something really _was_ leading him. Arriving at the loft in Chelsea it became certainty. Each of them had come here, once upon a time. Whether it was Isaac's studio, or Suresh's lab, each of them had walked through that door looking for answers, looking for…something.

He didn't think any of them had been happier for what they gained.

His personal associations were far from pleasant, though they did not hold the same sharp edge as those he'd experienced in Midtown. These had a formlessness that made their subtle presence more evocative. He did not have to go in. Already he could smell the scent of paint and turpentine, taste on his tongue mingled shades of anticipation and uncertainty, and a quiet dread.

Here, he'd been forced to face the reality of what was going on. He'd been forced to confront what he had been doing and what might happen if he didn't find a way to stop—a fate that had hung over the heads of an entire city, nearly every person in it unaware of how easily they could have be wiped from existence and almost were. He _had_ wanted to stop it, at one point, but the momentum of things had carried him past the point where it seemed possible. It had spiraled so rapidly out of his control.

Nathan knew that in the end what he'd done had been the right thing, but standing here he didn't feel like it was a victory he owned any part of. He might have come through with a Hail Mary at the end, but before he'd been a willing partner in all those deaths. Though no doubt many had since, Hiro had been the first to call him a villain. The man had seemed so naïve, his view of the world almost childishly simple. Yet the preponderance of evidence that had stacked up since those days showed that his accusation, however juvenile, hadn't been far wrong.

Nathan pulled reign on the course his thoughts had taken. The past was behind him and had to stay there. He couldn't undo the things he had done.

_What am I doing?_

With an almost unreasonable reluctance he shook himself free of the uncanny sense that had gripped him. Letting himself be compelled by some inchoate whim wasn't remotely like him. Maybe somewhere along the muddy path his life had taken Nathan had lost his sense of himself, but he wasn't going to find it by acting like anyone else. He couldn't continue to let this thing, whatever it was, continue to derail his life.

Stepping up to the curb, he hailed a taxi. He hoped he might restrain his mind from wandering down any more dark alleys if his feet were prevented from following. His entire morning was beginning to feel like a misstep, but it had set his course, and he was trapped on it for now. He resolved to finish the day out, see if his efforts lead anywhere. As he ducked into the cab, his eyes stole a hurried glance into the rear-view. The driver had to repeat the question of where he was headed twice before Nathan was able to put aside a feeling of unease that had come upon him suddenly. As he told the man his destination, he realized with a jolt what had bothered him. He'd half expected to see someone he knew in the eyes that stared back from the mirror. Not surprisingly, the driver's eyes had held no note of familiarity to him…

But then, for a moment, neither had his own.


	4. Watch: verb

**Chapter 4: Watch (verb)**

"Peter? Look, you still take lunch at that diner near your dispatch? I'll be there until one if you decide show up. Call me if you've got something else planned." He shook his head, barely restraining a frustrated snort. "Or just…_call_ me."

He hung up once more. Trust Peter not to cooperate with his plans. When had he ever?

His _fourth_ call. The earlier irritation with his brother had begun to grow steadily since the second. By now it had evolved into a nagging suspicion that he was completely wasting his time. Now, he found himself fighting to quell a sadistic inner voice that was trying to tip the balance over into real anger. He briefly entertained the suggestion that Pete was ignoring him, on purpose and out of spite. His brother had plenty of reason to be angry with him, after all. It was actually the plausibility of such a thing that made the thought difficult to digest. The possibility that Peter might be giving him the cold shoulder like a sullen child was not a totally outrageous one. He was a dreamer, a repeat victim of his own childish conviction that the world should be fair. Nathan didn't need a score of half-remembered incidents to guess that he always had been. When the inevitable occurred, betraying his sense of justice, it left him in a petulant bad temper.

That attitude used to annoy Nathan in and of itself, he was certain. Just now, it inspired a sort of amused sense of pity more than anything else. No, what he found so aggravating at this very moment was the feeling that he was being disregarded, a bothersome sense that Peter was not taking him seriously.

_I'm the older brother_, he reasoned weakly,_ that should mean…something_.

Rationally it was far more likely that Peter had some legitimate reason for not answering back. The awareness of that floated somewhere behind the anger that was looming low over the horizon at this slight. _Imagined _slight, he knew. He realized suddenly that he had been culturing his resentment into something more, almost without noticing it. It was almost as though he _wanted_ to believe Peter was deliberately wasting his time. Wanted to be insulted so that he had an excuse to… He wasn't sure what.

He couldn't name when he'd started to do that. If forced to hazard a guess, though, he could only connect it as a product of the current state of his existence. In what he could recall of his life there had been so few times he'd been faced with something he could not try to confront in some manner. All those things in his past life which had been or seemed beyond his ability to fight lay behind the wall which was the core of his current misery. Heidi's paralysis, his father's death, the apparent inevitability of Linderman's future… His inner reactions to those hardships—the grief, the helplessness, the rage and fear—lived in him only as conjecture, lost. Trapped behind a transparent barrier through which he could see his former life, maddeningly close but untouchable. From his current vantage he could see no escape. No outlet against his frustration but to bang against the glass and seethe, uselessly.

That frustration held the potential to turn into rage. It could easily grow to consume other parts of his life if he wasn't careful. Distracted within his own mind, Nathan shoved the price of his fare into the cabdriver's hands without a word.

Nathan paused briefly at a newsstand on the opposite corner, sparing the establishment a moment's casual analysis. The diner was called P.K.D.'s. It was what diners often were, unassuming, to his brief imagining almost humble. No more and no less than what it needed to be. Ducking inside, it was also not overcrowded and at least clean.

There didn't appear to be any sign of Peter. If his brother was even coming.

He claimed an empty booth, tucking himself away discreetly in a back corner. Though the sun had been up and shining for hours, it had yet to rob the day of its cold bite. It had taken time over the course of his walk, but his clothes had dried. The breeze at his back had left them stiff and cold, a clinging reminder of his thoughtless rush to be here. He ordered a coffee, fanning the paper in front of him. As he prepared to wait, he could not help but rebuke himself for his foolishness. If he'd chosen to handle his affairs with a bit more patience and wisdom he might have been able to ride out the storm of confusion that battered him, tearing his tranquility to shreds. Instead he'd jumped headlong into it, and was left to reap its worth in humiliation.

Nathan wasn't certain why he had begun to hang so much importance upon this particular meeting with his brother. He'd made attempts already, to open channels between them at least, attempts toward peace, reconciliation, toward _mending_ things between the two of them. Perhaps it was a further sign of his growing impatience, that he'd decided his efforts had not been enough. He considered that this urgency might be linked to his troubling walk that morning, the thoughts which had plagued him holding an acidic edge of ill-omen. Uneasily, he allowed himself to entertain that it was just another part of his life swept up in the tide of the needy emptiness that had begun to consume him. It was like an appetite had been whetted that morning by his thoughts of Heidi, a drive to pick up the shattered bits of his life where he found them. Try and bring the pieces together and have it all make sense. Only then, maybe, would it be sated.

He hoped.

Though… The rift between he and his brother _did_ need to be repaired. If time was allowed to pass, and he sit idle, that wound might never heal properly. It had been the differences between them that had driven him and Peter apart in the beginning. He had to make sure that, in the face of all the things they had confronted—the obstacles they'd tackled together, the times they'd stood apart as enemies—they had not changed so much that they couldn't still be brothers.

In any other family, he mused, forgiveness might have been a hopeless aim. However the sad—fortunate—truth of the matter was that if Peter attempted to sever his ties with everyone who had betrayed him and his lofty principles, the man would have no family left. He couldn't help but pity his brother, knowing that it was a sacrifice Peter would probably never be entirely prepared to make. The instinct to deceive seemed to be an endemic and deeply ingrained part of the Petrelli legacy. Perhaps Peter alone had had the strength to rise above that. Or perhaps it was just more proof that his younger brother had never truly bothered with growing up.

Nathan's thoughts took a sour turn as he registered the heights of loathing hypocritically invested in these reflections of his. Had his own forked tongue always inspired such disgust as he now felt? Was it only now, when he found himself in this quandary trying to pull himself out of a hole and finding himself weighed down with the leaden baggage of his own deceit?

Diversion from these thoughts eluded him, the desire for it seemingly hopeless. The newspaper that sat in front of him failed spectacularly in the task of engaging his interest, unable to hold his attention long enough to stave off his thoughts for even a moment. He found himself staring blindly at the text, eyes hopping lines, scanning the print forward and reverse without comprehension. Though outwardly the only evidence was the tiny twitch of a page, the corner of the newspaper sagging almost invisibly in his hands, the feeling of defeat that crept through him may as well have been a crashing wave.

He shook his head with an almost mournful self reproach, his gaze pulling idly across the diner.

He was able to appreciate with a sort of pale, belated amusement the view granted by the seat he had chosen. The establishment was offered to him in its entirety, and humans being the generally obtuse animals that they were, one might use such a perspective to observe its patrons with a spectacular amount of scrutiny without being noticed.

Crowd watching was not a habit that was suggested by his memories, but it was one he had fallen into nonetheless. In an odd way, he attributed the practice a certain degree of responsibility in his survival. On a handful of occasions it had afforded him the means to slide through confrontations with even close acquaintances without tipping his hand that anything was wrong, presenting him with clues now and again when his traitorous memories dangled beyond his grasp.

And he'd found himself to have something of a knack for it.

With the newspaper angled just so, it could appear to be what held his attention while his awareness passed between subjects. He allowed his gaze to drift, eyes taking in small details, moving before any hint of interest could be noted. He each observed and absorbed his surroundings in a series of glances only a few heartbeats in length, snapshots which he could put together in his mind like a collage, forming a more meaningful picture. The waitress with pained lines about her eyes that give a brittle-plaster quality to her smile, the slow, gingerly roll she gave to her wrists when she thought no one watched. The student crammed into a booth with her books, oblivious that the pen caressing her lips was a transparently infantile gesture telegraphing anxiety over her studies.

In one booth, a young couple seemed to be enjoying their lunch with a friend. They leaned deeply against each other in their seat. The flicker of their companion's eye away from the display had defined itself to him at first as simple embarrassment—or, he mused briefly with a touch of sympathy, perhaps disgust. It soon bloomed into his understanding that it was more. The escalating demonstrations of possessiveness and denial hinted at jealousy, budding rivalry that he suspected had yet to be consciously realized by those involved. A fragile balance. Depending on the strength of the friendships, it might take only a gentle nudge to send everything flying apart, shattered perhaps beyond repair.

He felt the beginnings of a smirk curving gently upon his lips. The pleasure he had found in the pastime had at first been hard for him to place, but he had since come to realize that observing others, their flounderings and failings, offered him a bit of comfort against his own inner turmoil. The chaos of their lives absolved him slightly of his own confusion. To an extent, it allowed him to feel that his detachment was something else entirely. Rather than feeling himself lacking, for a few moments it let him feel he was apart from all the rest of them. It was a pleasant, superior remove. He felt he rose above, separate from the petty concerns of the flock. He was better, more, untouchable.

Invincible.

It was a heady feeling, that separation. Though, ultimately, it was no less isolating than one might expect: the feeling of complete alienation from almost everyone around him. In the very beginning, Nathan had fought with such passion not to be different, but on the day they had confronted Sylar he'd been forced to abandon his denial of what he was. He no longer fought that—could no longer _conceive_ of fighting—as he had for so long. He was unsure if there was some connection, if that euphoric sense of elevation was one common to others who had embraced that exceptional nature they shared. He supposed at some point he could always ask—

His phone buzzed distractingly. Tossing down his unread paper, he retrieved it quickly from his coat pocket.

"Pete?"

"Where are you?"

Nathan's voice was stalled for a moment, his jaw tightening slightly with the recognition. In his mind he swore violently.

The voice on the other end of the line did _not_ belong to his brother.

Bennet. He had yet to pinpoint just what it was which inspired his instant—almost instinctive—dislike of the man. For whatever reason, the feeling was so very mutual. He felt part of it might be the rumblings of paternal jealousy, each resenting the claim the other held on Claire. But it was only part, more the driving force of Bennet's antipathy than his own. It was possible his own sentiments had their roots in the time they had both worked at Building 26, though his memories of that time baffled him with the unfathomable idea that they had ever been able to interact civilly. He had never trusted the man, of that he was certain, though given his very nature that certainty meant very little. In his experience, you could count on exactly two things in life: a snake to strike and Noah Bennet to lie.

Certainty was a hard-sought luxury in Nathan's life anymore. Too often he felt unable to trust those around him, no matter how close. Almost as often, he did not trust himself. But he was good at reading people, and he had found that often it was a matter of only slight effort to decode their motives. Bennet was different. There were times when he thought he understood the man, calculating and driven in a way that on occasion seemed almost familiar, nonetheless he had all too often proven a very difficult man to predict.

Ironically, it was this same set of traits that had made him the obvious choice to handle the organization budding under Nathan's control—the _new_ Company.

Nathan replied very simply.

"New York." He had aborted a dozen others on his tongue—each venomous—eventually settling for one that, while curt and laden with sarcasm, was at least a literal answer to the man's question. "You should know that since I left instructions with my assistant."

"Yes, of course. Let me rephrase." The cool impatience in Bennet's response inspired an almost childish flavor of sadistic joy. "What the hell are you thinking?"

Bennet's condescension irritated him, inspiring a twinge of bilious anger.

"I know my mother has had you keeping track of my activities." It was an effort to modulate his tone, the result bleached almost entirely of inflection. He knew they kept him under surveillance, and he had no doubt Bennet was well aware of the fact that he knew. It was no secret that, after the business of 26, Angela did not trust him. He'd earned that much. However, he drew the line at being treated like a dog that could not be allowed off its leash. "That doesn't make you my babysitter, Noah."

"Except that, apparently you need one. 'An early flight'? That was reckless of you, Nathan." There was a brief silence on the line. It seemed the sort that in face to face conversation would usually be followed by some manner of verbal maneuvering on Bennet's part. In only moments he was proven right, but the move was very well chosen. "You know, when Claire heard the words 'family emergency', she was scared something might have happened to Peter."

"Shit. Would you tell her I'm sorry?" He somehow doubted Bennet would be much inclined to deliver the apology. Biting back his pride as much as he was able, he allowed his voice to soften subtly with his quite genuine regret. "I wasn't thinking."

"Obviously."

"Bennet…" He found himself pinching the bridge of his nose with almost painful force between his fingers, not so much from headache as from an unrelenting sense of pressure. As though this struggle to keep control within his own mind was making him physically ill as he was forced closer and closer to a grudging acknowledge of defeat. "You can handle things without me for a few days. In fact, I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

He paused for a moment, formulating his thought carefully.

"I _need_ to step away from this for a couple days. I…I feel like I'm losing myself." His voice was thin, almost hoarse. It was the closest he had come to admitting the full truth to anyone, he felt almost violated that Bennet should be his confessor. "I need to find something…an anchor. Just two days, some time with Heidi and the boys, with Peter. I'll be back on Monday."

His teeth ground loudly as he bit his words violently to a halt. Just short of begging, he _refused_.

A long, empty silence prefaced Bennet's reply which Nathan's mind filled speculatively. With confusion, understanding, contempt, concern, pity… When the man spoke, it was uncertainty he heard in his voice more than anything else, as well as an uncommon hesitance that registered even through his own chaotic thoughts.

"Monday, then. I'll inform Angela that you're in town."

The connection closed, blessedly freeing him from the obligation to respond. He snapped it shut, throwing it down carelessly onto the newspaper in front of him. He sat for several moments with his eyes tightly shut, the tips of his fingers pressed gently into the sockets. He tried to steady his breathing, tried to forget the complete meltdown he'd narrowly so narrowly avoided. Meltdown—breakdown. Not for the first time, he was forced to consider the possibility that this wasn't just some minor glitch that would fade with time. The terrifying possibility that always seemed to lurk in the back of his thoughts, poised to surface at the worst points of his confusion…

What if he was simply losing his mind?

On the tail of that thought, he felt suddenly that he was not alone. When he opened his eyes he almost felt that the universe had answered his question with definitive, efficient brutality. Sitting across from him in the opposite side of the booth was a dead man…

Sylar cocked his head, lips pulling into a crooked leer.

"I hope you weren't waiting for someone."

* * *

A/N—I don't usually like to write author's notes, but I guess if you've stuck with me through the opaque verbosity of the past four chapters, a little nattering at the end won't harm things. ;)

I believe that the pace of the story (if not the pace of updates) will pick up from here, as more characters become involved and fewer chapters are filled just by "Nathan's" brooding. I'm sorry that I've taken so long on this. The events of this chapter were originally meant to be part of chapter 3. I hope be another delay with the next, but in all honesty it probably will happen again. Also to blame is Bennet, since I was almost finished with this chapter when he interrupted with his phonecall.

So, yeah, a bit of a cliffhanger here. I honestly couldn't resist. I might have let slip to a few people what is going on here (because I can't keep a good secret to myself if it would save my life). Hopefully they will keep it to themselves.

Also, anyone who can figure out why I named the diner "P.K.D.'s" wins my instant respect. It's more than a little obscure, but not exactly unrelated to the theme of the story.


	5. Playing With Fire

**Chapter 5: Playing With Fire**

Despite everything he knew, everything he had seen, the first thought that tore itself through his mind was that it simply was not possible for him to be seeing what he thought he did—or rather,_ who_.

At least, it was the first _coherent_ thought. It had been prefaced by a roiling, gibbering, jumbled storm of emotions. Alarm, confusion, panic, rage—they buzzed through his head chaotically like the whizzing, stinging defenders of an upset beehive. It was all too quickly shifting for him to grasp any one of them for long…which left his mind with only one thing it _could_ clasp onto. It was a fairly steady mental defense, one that had no doubt ensured the survival of mankind through the most disturbing situations history had set before its collective sanity. A defense that boiled down to a single, simple—if ignobly false—concept:

_Impossible._

There was fear, of course, too, though it seemed remarkably thin, diminished—whey-like. Possibly it was simply shock at being confronted so suddenly and unexpectedly with Sylar _alive_ before him. The fullness of dread would no doubt assert itself once the initial surprise wore away and allowed the danger he confronted to have its effect upon him. _If_ he lived that long. Though, in truth the peculiar diluteness of his terror shared something in character with his earlier disconnected sense of invulnerability.

Though Death sat in front of him, pale lips pulled into a predatory smile, _fear_ was so distant that it found itself shoved almost immediately from the forefront of his mind.

Outwardly, one might never know it. His posture practically rang with the tension coiled in his limbs, shoulders lifting in an even rhythm to the deliberate control of his breathing. His teeth were gritted almost painfully, his hands curled into tight fists with knuckles bleached of blood by the pressure of his grip. Signs which could be interpreted as fearful owed themselves to anger, as well as a deep sense of desperate frustration that had stolen into his being. The threat which sat before him demanded the choice two primitive reactions—flee or fight. Bitter logic informed him that both were impossible.

His apprehensive silence seemed to lack a little something as far as his companion was concerned. Sylar leaned across the table, his expression almost smugly expectant, though of what Nathan could not begin to imagine.

"What's wrong, Nathan? Speechless?" The inquiry hummed cheerily, mockingly, feeding Nathan's anger to flare. "You of all people…"

"I don't know how you're alive, but someone will stop you. Someone _will_ kill you."

Nathan was pleasantly surprised by the composure with which he delivered the promise, a deceptive calm that hid the rush of his anger, his bitter frustration, but above all the occupation of his mind. Internally, he was attempting to formulate a way in which "someone" might still be him—some way in which he might come out of this encounter _alive_. He had to allow the idea that this unwanted guest was somehow the product of his previously hypothesized insanity, but discarded the possibility as being second in priority to the possibility that Sylar was actually alive and in front of him. After all, hallucinations were only an incidental threat to the sufferer's survival. If the man in front of him were a hallucination it would not really matter what he did. However, if Sylar was _real_, time lost questioning the reality of that fact would get him killed.

His words seemed to affect Sylar far more than he might have otherwise anticipated from the killer. A shocked expression manifested itself first in his eyes, normally so cold, then the rest of his face was overtaken by a puzzled twist as his eyebrows pulled down in confusion. It stayed frozen there for a few seconds before the features relaxed into an astonished, lopsided grin that pulled suddenly at the right corner of his mouth. It skewed the features in a way that struck him as oddly incorrect.

And _familiar_.

A quiet beat passed between recognition and realization as the truth of the situation snapped into place. The galloping rhythm of his heart stuttered briefly as an altogether more plausible explanation suggested itself for his ghostly visitor…

"_Peter_." His brother's name ground itself out dangerously, a low, inflectionless warning spilled from between clenched teeth. "I swear to _God_—"

His words cut off abruptly as "Sylar" whipped a quick glance across the diner. Perhaps miraculously, their unusual greeting and exchange of pleasantries seemed not to have attracted any undue attention. The same placement which had granted him his inclusive view of the diner left the man seated on the opposite side of the booth, his back was to the crowd, shielded from the view of most of the diner's patrons. Nathan's stomach twisted treacherously as he watched the killer's features distort, dissolving away slowly, replaced by those of his brother. Seeing Peter's flesh warp and stretch in an uneven, rolling creep caused his own skin to crawl in fitfully uncomfortable sympathy, as thought it would march right off his bones.

Once his original form settled quietly into place Peter ticked a weak smile his way, ducking his head down as though examining the menu on the table in front of him. Peter and Sylar were close enough in their general appearance. The change would as likely as not be overlooked by any who failed to see the switch occur, which it seemed no one had. More than likely, anyone who _had_ seen would have convinced themselves it had simply been a trick of the light. Though, honestly—

_And Bennet chides _me_ for being reckless_.

There was little surprising about the anger Nathan felt for his brother at that moment. Except, perhaps, for the intensity. He found himself very briefly considering making good on his promise to "Sylar" moments past. If he was to be _very_ honest with himself, the thought of doing violence on Peter evoked a cool trickle of pleasure… Probably, he thought, more than was strictly healthy. Through an almost supernatural exertion of effort he managed to slam a tight lid on his temper. The impulse to deliver numerous, varied and creative forms bodily harm upon his brother diminished slowly, the anger draining form his thoughts—for the most part.

Nathan landed an outraged smack upside his brother's fool head. So he'd proven to himself he still _could_ keep a cool head when he wanted. He wasn't a _saint_.

"Ow! _Hey_—" The indignation alone in Peter's reaction was nearly enough to drag him back down into the mire of his anger.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you?"

The bewilderment in his voice was entirely genuine…honestly, he _had_ to wonder. However, his analysis of just what his brother's particular mental malfunction might be was interrupted by an approaching waitress. He managed to turn her off with a desperate shake of his head—or perhaps his agitation was simply plain to her. He turned his eyes away, sucking in a slow breath before he was even capable of allowing himself to deal with his brother.

"I was just playing around, Nathan."

"It wasn't funny. Jesus, Peter…where does that even _begin_ to seem like a good idea?"

"I don't know, I just— I don't know. It's like…" Interested in the response that must eventually work its way from Peter's mind to his lips, Nathan studied his brother's face carefully. He was surprised at the confusion that wrote itself across his features as he trailed off into an ashamed silence. Despite himself, Nathan's anger fell away, displaced by his curiosity—and not a terribly small amount of concern.

"It's what?" He prompted softly, waiting for Peter to articulate something that seemed just to be outside his grasp. Nathan certainly knew the feeling.

"It's well… Shapeshifting?" Peter whispered finally, leaning in closer to his elder brother. One eyebrow and the inflection of his voice both rose faintly so that it was almost a question. He was about to beg for understanding, Nathan realized. Peter shrugged weakly, as though to diminish the importance of whatever he was about to share. The gesture failed. The only thing that seemed diminished to Nathan was his brother's dignity. Whatever Peter felt he needed to confess, it couldn't truly be that embarrassing.

"I mean," he continued, "I can't really _use_ it for anything, you know? I just…I haven't had the chance to replace it with something more practical. And part of me doesn't _want_ to. After all, I'm the only one who has it. Once I give it up, that power is gone for good."

He sat back slightly, breathing a faint laugh. "The ability to copy people is the only thing that makes me unique. Kind of ironic and sad, huh?"

Nathan allowed himself a faint, almost inert smile in response. It was a concern which tasted somehow familiar, and he speculated that it might recall the very beginning. When Peter had fought so ardently—first to have a destiny, then against it once it was offered. Though, curiously, wherever it resided in his memory the sentiment seemed to hold far more bitterness than Nathan suspected Peter was capable of...

"Anyway…" Peter faltered for just a moment, his hesitance calling Nathan's attention back to the conversation. "This might sound crazy, but… Did you ever feel like…like your ability _wanted_ to be used?"

Nathan was forced to admit to himself, quite painfully, his inability to speak for the man he's lost—the man he _used_ to be. Though he knew that man had fought against what made him different with every fiber of his being, he couldn't now know what that had actually felt like, inside. Thinking back over the past months, over which he had had so few opportunities to indulge his ability, his mind flashed upon numerous times he'd felt stifled by this duties, found his mind somewhere else entirely…

More times than he could count he'd been drawn away from himself, afflicted by an acute feeling like there was _something_ inside him that was beating itself bloody to be free.

Bennet's words regarding the irresponsibility of his actions came back to him, and he was forced to admit to himself how true they were. Perhaps, he considered, chief among the things he had surrendered to his current state of mind was the ability to reign in his impulses as he once had. To resist his own desires, as he once had. On his flight to New York he had felt almost as though he _owned_ the sky. Combined with the elation felt at the thought of the reunion which had loomed ahead—_then_, before it had all been torn from him—his mood had been incredible. He'd felt as close to being hole, then, as he had in months, but more than that… He had felt so far away from anything that could possibly damage him, naked of humanity's entrapments, of his own encumbrances as part of that world. From his current perspective his past denial seemed almost unfathomable. What he had been resisting with such ardor in that long lost time before was _freedom_.

And, strangely, it felt like just the tip of the iceberg, as though there was so much more within his grasp…

He could definitely understand how Peter might have difficulty putting such feelings into words. He pondered briefly what he himself would do with the ability that Peter currently possessed. Perhaps inspired by their earlier exchange, the possibility which suggested itself almost immediately involved using it to torment Noah Bennet. The mere thought of unsettling the usually unflappable ex-agent forced a smirk to tug at Nathan's lips. Nathan decided that he was willing to forgive the prank…just this once.

The expression was not missed by his brother, and so he answered Peter's question with a slight nod. A silent moment passed between the two of them. Of course, once reassured, Peter relaxed visibly. Then, with a grin, he verbally proceeded to ruin it.

"I _did_ have you, for a little bit."

Nathan stifled his resurging irritation behind an amused snort. He couldn't spend this entire lunch being annoyed with his brother. He had a feeling it could quickly become far too exhausting.

"It's hard to know just what is possible, Pete." He admonished lightly, somewhat in his own defense. "We can't afford to underestimate even our _dead_ enemies anymore. Especially…"

Not for the first time, he found he was hesitant to speak the name, as though to do so might summon the dead man's wicked shade. He frowned slightly, afflicted by a sudden stab of curiosity.

"Why…Sylar?" he asked. The name inspired an odd feeling in him, a faint jump in his pulse. Perhaps the sight of Sylar sitting in front of him had left him more rattled than he first thought. Despite the autumn temperatures outside, the diner felt surprisingly warm. Nathan snaked a finger under the knot of his tie, trying to loosen it, beset all at once by the sensation that it was strangling him. Like a noose.

"If you can be anybody, why would you want to be…_him_?"

"Well, not just anybody. I need to have their DNA."

Despite the anxiety which afflicted him at that moment, Nathan was unable to restrain himself from lifting a questioning eyebrow at his brother's choice of words. Peter noted it with a groan.

"A _touch_." He explained urgently. "It works with a touch."

"So why did you take Sylar's?"

"When he tried to copy me, when I posed as the President, his power sort of freaked out. Since it was my power too, I kind of wanted to know why, you know? Whether it was because we had the same power, or if it was because I was in a different form. So while he was unconscious…"

"So you sampled his DNA while he was out." Nathan's taunting leer expressed a degree of humor he couldn't really feel at that particular moment, though the emotion wasn't entirely absent either. "That's kind of sick, Pete."

"Damn it, I said it's just a touch." Peter grumbled, vaguely flustered. "Here, I'll show you…"

As his brother reached out toward him, Nathan felt a sudden stab of apprehension flare in his gut. Without even thinking, he snatched his hands away from the table, avoiding Peter's fingers. Like before, when he'd seen his brother transform back from Sylar's shape, just the idea was enough to inspire an imagined feeling akin to bugs under his skin. He cleared his throat with a hoarse cough.

"No thanks, Peter." He said, his mouth having gone inexplicably dry. "I think I've seen enough of myself to last me a lifetime."

Peter gave a faint grimace, seeming to Nathan's eye mildly disappointed though he managed a short laugh. "Fair enough."

Conversation from that point took a turn toward the inane. As badly as his memory had suffered, Nathan brooked no illusions that his brother cared about the slow grindings of the political machine, or that he had ever done so. He credited Peter with just enough wit to know that the feeling was mutual where his own hectic professional life was concerned. However, it was part of the essential ritual, a necessary sacrifice on both their parts. It was like a pledge, that each would honor the attempt to bring back together that which had been sundered.

As it happened, the high point of the bold hero's day had involved rescuing a toddler whose ankle had become stuck in a toilet.

Beneath the surface of the conversation, Nathan's mind wandered, assessing his feelings toward his brother. As with Claire the emotions inspired by his brother seemed substantial enough, but they were by far some of the most confusing he had experienced. He had not seen his brother more than twice since that night at Coyote Sands, and only spoken a handful of times over the phone. In their previous interactions, the swiftness with which Nathan often found himself experiencing irritation or outright anger toward Peter had been baffling. It wasn't that their history didn't hold the precedent for animosity—in fact, it was there in spades. It was simply that some part of him knew there should be more to it than that.

Prodding it, he found that there was. Beneath the hostility and disdain, beneath the unkind, smug appreciation for just how badly his brother's optimism had been bruised there _was_ something, buried deep as though it was trying to be forgotten. It was a desperately tenuous ghost of a feeling, the stubborn sense that a connection had once existed between them…something that had flared bright, but died with painful suddenness. The strange hollow that it had left behind rang with a dull sense of bitter, angry regret.

That familiar, sour frustration flooded him once more. His feelings for his family seemed decayed beyond any sort of reasonable recognition. His feelings for Heidi were so blunted. It was something he had yet to put forth the effort to correct. Whatever flaw was causing this discord within him, it was something that would have to be corrected, and it would have to be _soon_. He wasn't sure he wouldn't lose his mind for real if it wasn't.

As the waitress finally arrived for their orders, apologizing for taking so long, Nathan was forced to cease his introspection. He was soon robbed of his opportunity to return to his train of thought as well, as he found Peter looking at him oddly.

"Since when do you eat tuna?"

Peter's question had the remarkable effect of completely derailing any chance at rational thought for almost a full minute. Nathan could answer it only with a blank stare, shielding behind it a peculiar unease. Under Peter's answering stare for a moment he felt oddly persecuted. As though his brother might somehow something that he did not want found. The feeling was so pervasive that he could not formulate a reply, instead resorting to a confused expression of the sort subtly accusing its recipient of mental illness.

"Um…you _hate_ fish? Remember that time we went fishing when I was seven? You really didn't want to go, but I begged you? You end up tripping in the boat and—"

"No, Pete, I _don't_."

The blatantly candid answer cut his brother off sharply. The word "remember" had brought all of his frustrations to the fore quite drastically. He was getting tired of this. So damned tired… Peter's reaction to the confession was a suspicious stare; one which seemed to hold a real accusation. Nathan found it incited the return of his earlier anger and annoyance.

"_What_, Pete?"

"You're acting _weird_. Playing hookie from work to spend time with your kid brother? And call it a hunch, but when you flew up here I'm guessing you didn't pass through an airport. That's not like you."

Despite a curling unease which writhed in his gut, Nathan managed to deadpan a mocking reply.

"You caught me, Pete. _I'm_ actually Sylar and you've exposed my diabolical plot to…what? Leave you with the check?"

Peter snorted a laugh, rolling his eyes.

"Well, you _have_ been acting different lately. Less, I don't know…driven."

Internally, Nathan was uncomfortably aware that this was far from the truth. He wasn't any less driven. Most simply, he was no longer being driven by _ambition_. He was uncertain what force drove him now. Part of him was positive that it was something he did not want to know.

"Maybe I've been spending too much time with Claire." He excused finally. His brother's soft spot for the girl, he knew, was as tender as his own. "She's a bad influence."

"No," Peter said, with a warm smile, "I like it. I think she's been good for you, Nathan."

Nathan found himself smiling as well, though feeling a note of malicious amusement. He wasn't entirely sure why. Shaking off the tinge of confusion, he tried to focus his thoughts on something more solid, more…pleasant.

"It's strange." He said, the smile on his lips broadening slightly. "I didn't even know she existed until just over a year ago, but she's become so…important to me."

Peter sat back with a light shrug. "Family is what it is."

For some reason, Peter's ambiguous statement stirred something painful in his chest. He sat quiet for several moments, and in the mean time the waitress arrived with their meal.

"It's…good to see you, Pete."

Nathan was oddly surprised to find that he genuinely meant it.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I deeply apologize for this months-late monstrosity of a chapter. Writing this thing was like pulling teeth for some odd reason. This chapter was originally supposed to be of one piece with the previous one, but had to be split off for length. Halfway through writing this, I found myself wishing I could just split it again, but there wasn't any appropriate place where it could be divided. Finally I said screw it, and figured here was as good a place as any. The cliffhanger from the previous chapter had just sat far too long… The conversation will conclude next chapter.

If Peter seems a bit OOC, remember whose eyes we're actually viewing him through. If he _still_ seems a little bit off, please explain to me what Peter's canon personality is, because I never saw one to speak of… (_zing_) No, honestly, let me know if I'm doing anything wrong with him. I've never really gotten Peter.


	6. Presque vu

**Chapter 6: Presque vu  
**

Peter seemed to have noticed the peculiar, tense atmosphere which had crept up between them. Nathan watched with an amused, half-hearted attention as his brother cast a glance around the diner, punctuated by scratching the inside corner of his eyebrow. It was a studied move at appearing unconcerned, one which didn't fool Nathan for a moment. Inwardly he sighed. There was something on the younger man's mind, something that it seemed he was hesitant to address directly. Well… If Peter wanted to play innocent of whatever it was that was bothering him, for now Nathan could play right back.

"So," the younger man asked finally, attempting to hide behind a mask of affected indifference and a swallow of hot coffee, "how'd you know about this place, anyway?"

"Is there something wrong with a man keeping track of his brother?"

"Well, you had me arrested as a terrorist, once, so excuse me if having you monitor my habits makes me a little antsy."

_Aha._ He smiled bitterly. _Of course._

"I've done a lot of things that I'm not proud of, Peter. I think we're both clearly aware of that fact. I've made mistakes. I don't pretend otherwise." He leaned forward with a sigh, his forearms resting against the edge of the table. The expression on Peter's face finally allowed his skepticism, but the younger man met his brother's eyes all the same. It was a detail for which Nathan found himself unexpectedly grateful. "I know that I can't undo the things I've done, but— I can't be the man I used to be, either. However I can change, I want to try and change. I want to make things right again between us. That's why I'm here."

He paused and watched as the wary, listening expression his brother wore remained in place, taking a drink of his coffee. His fingers flexed gently around the warm mug in his hands, the heat helping him to anchor his thoughts just a bit.

"I'm also," he continued hesitantly, "trying to fix things with Heidi."

Peter's reaction was immediate and sincere, the broad grin which erupted on his face even seeming to banish the cobwebs of mistrust that had hung there.

"Really? Nathan, that's great."

Nathan waved off Peter's enthusiasm with an impatient hand, though witnessing it he couldn't help but feel a little hope, in spite of himself.

"We're going to try." He conceded. "We had coffee before she had to work this morning. She—_we've_ made some plans… I'm going to Mass with her and the boys tomorrow. Spend the day with them."

Perhaps it was the uncertainty of his tone. Peter seemed to pick up on it, and how unbalanced he felt at that moment, sharing these precarious plans upon which everything seemed to be teetering. He felt like his life had no foundation. He could only hope Heidi and the boys could provide that for him, that bringing his family back together would fill the empty space that seemed to gape within him, wide open and cold. He didn't know, couldn't be sure.

The doubts ground hope into something sharp, and cutting.

His brother's eyes settled on him, for once devoid of accusation or distrust. The naked worry Nathan saw there was hardly better, sparking a brief flicker of resentment.

"You really don't remember that fishing trip?"

Nathan frowned, forcing himself to meet Peter's eyes for a long, silent moment. Forcing himself to face his brother's growing concern and not see the pity that he knew wasn't really there. Nathan could tell, probably before Peter knew himself, that his brother was going to push, and it took everything not to divert attention from the subject before he could.

"Talk to me, Nate."

"I've been finding these…holes in my memory, lately."

The confession came coaxed from him with considerably less pain than it had with Bennet. Hardly surprising, however he experienced a stab of confusion at the relief which followed behind. Like removing a splinter. A small amount of tension—_very_ small, gratefully noticed all the same—fell from his shoulders. He could have this conversation now, he realized. He realized as well that, if he didn't have it now, he probably never would.

"You mean like blackouts?"

"Like memory loss," he explained, pausing in an attempt to articulate the issue without seeming completely insane. "I keep coming across things that I should remember, but...I just can't. And when I do remember them, eventually—some of them—they're… I don't know. Hollow, kind of. I mean, they're clear, incredibly vivid even, most of the time. But…"

"I don't know how to describe it," he conceded after a pause, shaking his head with an unsteady breath. "It's like my entire _life_ is on the tip of my tongue and I can't grasp it... And I _need_ it. I need it so bad sometimes it's almost..._violent_."

"Like it's killing me," he said finally, dragging hands through his hair in a painfully helpless gesture, leaving it mussed. "It's been scaring the _hell_ out of me."

"Jesus. Have you…you know?" Nathan could practically see Peter juggling the pieces of his sentence as carefully as possible. Like disarming a bomb. "Talked to someone?"

"I talked to a _doctor_." He admitted with subtle emphasis. He allowed a hand to drag over his mouth. "After the fight, I...I thought it could have been caused by getting knocked around by Sylar. But I checked out. Actually, the doctor said I'm in better shape than I've been in years."

Peter pressed his lips slightly before managing to look him in the eye with a faint smile. "Must have been the family vacation we all took."

Nathan snorted a faint laugh despite himself. The comment was just too on the nose. Only part of his reluctance to see a psychiatrist stemmed from a simple fear of diagnosis. The circumstances surrounding his...condition were frankly too bizarre.

"When he asks what kind of stress I've been under," he asked Peter, returning the humor wanly, "am I supposed to tell him about the secret death camp and saving the President from a super-powered nutcase?"

God...that had to be a _last_ resort.

"Just... Please don't say anything to Ma." He asked finally as Peter's uncertain silence stretched. "This whole mess dug up more than bodies that had been lying too long. I don't want her to worry about me on top of dealing with that."

The word sounded nice enough, though honestly he was wary to expose such a vulnerability to his mother. It wasn't necessary for her to know the lapses were still happening.

"Sure, Nate. Of course." There was still more worry on Peter's face than Nathan would have liked, but...well. That was Peter, wasn't it?

"How _is_ she doing?" Nathan asked, more than a little guilt accompanying the defensiveness of his earlier thoughts. He hadn't spoken with her in...far longer than was normal, he was sure. The last time he had seen her was her last trip to D.C., their lunch together. Was that six weeks after Sylar's death? That would make it almost two months ago. The few phone conversations in between had spoken over the phone had a peculiar, stilted quality. He was so often busy and she always seemed to be rather distracted. Distant.

_Stilted, _Nathan thought bitterly, _Distant._ This recurring theme to his family life was becoming...tedious. And, as he listened to Peter's report on their mother's recent welfare, it occurred to Nathan that perhaps there was one more step he could take to rectify it.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I've been focusing on original fiction and other fandoms lately, so don't know how often I'll update this fic, if I continue to update it at all. I'm sorry to anyone who was following this when I started it. I don't consider it abandoned, since I know exactly where it's supposed to go.

Incidentally, I'd originally thought I was slightly underestimating Peter's intelligence by supposing that Nathan's failure to remember an apparently significant childhood memory wouldn't make him far more suspicious than he is in this story. From the way Peter failed in canon to suspect anything when Nathan used _telekinesis_ right in front of him, it appears I was vastly _over_estimating Peter's intelligence by a ridiculous margin.

Anyway...


End file.
